Page 96 - Reading Mercury

1786
th
Mon 20 March
At Aylesbury Assizes five prisoners were capitally convicted and received sentence
of death, viz., John Anderson, for a rape; John Bolton, for sheep-stealing; Henry Scott
for stealing two pair of women’s shoes; Joseph Dormer, for a burglary in the house of
John Body; and William Keares, for a burglary in the house of Joseph Walker. Bolton,
Scott, and Keares, were reprieved before his Lordship left Aylesbury, and Anderson
and Dormer left for execution.
About four o’clock this afternoon Richard Hemmings, for horse-stealing; John
Steptoe, for sheep-stealing; and William Cripps, for house-breaking, were executed
here, pursuant to their sentence at our last assizes. “They were attended to the place of
execution by the Under Sheriff, the Ordinary and proper officers. Since their
condemnation, to the time of their sufferings, they have behaved with the utmost
decency,” They prayed and sung incessantly all the way to the place of execution,
where Hemmings and Steptoe alternately addressed the spectators to take warning
from their miserable and untimely end; and exhorted them to avoid bad company, and
particularly that of bad women, whom Hemmings declared had been the first means
of leading him from the paths of rectitude. They all confessed themselves guilty of the
crimes from which they suffered; and after an hour spent in prayer with the Ordinary
under the gallows, they were launched into eternity

rd
Mon 3 April
READING
On Thursday last, as Mrs. Mary Cooper, wife of Mr. Cooper, of Broad Street, was
walking to Wokingham, to visit her relations, she fell down dead on the road, within a
small distance of that town. She was in perfect health when she left her home. The
same day an inquisition was taken on her body, before Mr. Osborn, surgeon, of this
town, and one of his Majesty’s coroners; when the jurors brought in their verdict, died
by the visitation of God.

Oxford, Saturday, April 1.
Last Monday, noon, Miles Ward, for robbing the altar of Magdalen College of its
plate; John Grace, with John Cox and Richard Cox, his brother, for sheep-stealing,
were executed here, pursuant to their sentences at our last assizes. At the place of
execution, Ward behaved himself in a manner very suitable to his situation; he prayed
fervently, and shed tears abundantly, yet with a becoming firmness; Grace and the
eldest Cox Shewed also a proper sense of the near approach of death; but the younger
of the Coxes seemed either hardened or stupefied in his last moments.
When all four, standing up in the cart, were tied up to the gallows, Ward, with great
composure, asked his companions, Are you all ready to die? If you are, let us take
leave of one another. They then all shook hands; and the cart drawing away before the
brothers had quitted each other’s hold, they long remained with the hands of each
strongly clasped together. After hanging the usual time, Ward’s body was put into a
handsome coffin, and carried away by his mother to Walham-Green in a smuggler’s
caravan and pair, which she had ordered down to Oxford for that purpose; and the two
Coxes were conveyed to Henley.
Under the gallows Ward delivered a paper in the following words:---William Cox’s
proposal to me Miles Ward.
“To rob the tan yard at Littlegate, and from thence to go to Mr. Piesley’s, currier,
and rob an outhouse of his of some leather.

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